Prior to forming the band, Score owned a salon called Oz the Magic Hairdresser, which catered to clients involved in Liverpool’s music scene. Guitar people hated synths, so when synth bands started having hits they were all against it.”Ī Flock of Seagulls formed in Liverpool in 1979 with Score’s brother Ali on drums, Frank Maudsley on bass and Paul Reynolds on guitar. In a way we broke a lot of barriers and we started different directions. “I watched some stuff on TV, and I think that could have been me if I started out now. “A lot of young bands realized that having an image can really set them apart,” he says. “We did things that no other band was doing before, whether you think it was good or bad, and it’s had its influence.” The influence includes Score’s famous hairstyle. “It’s almost like it skipped a generation and the people right after us didn’t like us and that’s fine, because they wanted to rebel against what was going on before them, kind of like the punks rebelled against the ’70s super bands.”Īs Score sees it, A Flock of Seagulls were innovators. “When I hear synth bands these days, I hear us,” he says. home, is happy he’s still able to support himself playing music, but he also feels that the band is getting a long-awaited reconsideration from music fans who once might have dismissed it as nothing more than New Wave fluff.
These days the 62-year-old Score, who calls Cocoa Beach, Fla. But I think it’s a hoot - so transparently, guilelessly expedient that it actually provides the hook-chocked fun most current pop bands only advertise.” That album reached the top 10 of the Billboard album chart and spawned the hits “I Ran” and “Space Age Love Song,” and also included the early dance club hit “Telecommunication/Modern Love is Automatic.”Īlong with the chart success came critical accolades from none other than the “dean of American rock critics” Robert Christgau, who gave the band’s debut album an A-minus rating in a review in which he wrote, “This is very silly, and I know why earnest new-wavers resent it. The Grammy Blade refers to was for Best Rock Instrumental for the track “D.N.A.,” from the band’s 1982 self-titled debut. But that ‘waterfall’ ’do, as Mike calls, it stole the show.”
#FLOCK OF SEAGULLS HAIR 80S SERIES#
“Most people forget they won a Grammy in 1982 and scored a series of big hits. “Their look overpowered their music,” says Richard Blade, a KROQ DJ during the band’s ’80s heyday, who now hosts the Flashback Lunch of sister station Jack-FM. The band performs Saturday at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank.Īlthough the group has been the butt of New Wave jokes for years, in retrospect, Seagulls - as Score tends to refer to them - did earn their fair share of accolades back in the day. The hair is gone - Score now shaves his head - and he is the band’s lone original member, but the songs remain the same. Thirty-three years after “I Ran (So Far Away),” the band’s biggest hit, broke into the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100, A Flock of Seagulls is still at it.
Then there was the music, a bouncy and incessantly upbeat mix of atmospheric guitars and hooky synthesizer lines, a 180-degree contrast to the doom and gloom of much of the post-punk crowd. First and foremost there was that hair - an extreme blond version of Eddie Munster’s ’do, falling into singer/keyboardist Mike Score’s face, topped by a set of gull wings that made his head look like it was ready for takeoff. When one flashes back to some of the cheesiest aspects of the ’80s music scene, A Flock of Seagulls undoubtedly comes to mind.
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